NaBloPoMo, oh how I've missed you.
What better way to start off this glorious month than with H1N1?! Exciting yes? Not particularly unless you're into seeing your six year old son hallucinate and yell in the middle of the night that he doesn't want the cockroach smooshed. Have you ever seen a boy that age try to function on about 7 hours of sleep in a two day period? Not pretty.
He missed out on his Halloween Fall Party at school on Friday and that made me sad. He was so looking forward to showing his schoolmates his costume (Spiderman, duh). I got the call right after lunch that he had a fever of 101.7 and went to get him. He cried on the way home when he realized what he would be missing that afternoon. I cried for him too.
That night was not good to him. He was coughing all night long. He cried about the cockroaches (really, we have none. Box elder bugs? Sure, you bet. See the 46 of them in the dustbuster, cockroaches in our house? no). He was burning up. No matter what I did, his temp never came under 102.
Saturday morning he was saying his brain felt like it was going to burst. Headache? Check. His temperature was 103.1 and when he begged me to take him to the doctor? I knew it was time to go in. This boy will fight the doctor if he feels he isn't "sick enough" to go. When he begs, it's serious. Last year around this time, he got that nasty rotovirus that went around wreaking havoc and causing extra loads of laundry to be done and buckets to be carried about. He lost eight pounds and was knocked out for ten days. Eight pounds lost on a (then) 5 3/4 yr old is some scary stuff. If the rotovirus did that to him, what the hell is going to happen this time?
The doctor took one look at him and declared it official. The fever, the coughing, the excruciating aches, the nose that couldn't stop running even with a tissue crammed in there? I've never seen a script written out so fast before in my life. When I mentioned that we have a 6 mos old (!)with congenital CMV at home and we were concerned about her exposure, he said she needed to come in immediately and get the shot.
Here's where things got fuzzy for me. Doc said to take the boy home (with a Tamiflu* script) and bring the girls in. The baby would get the H1N1 shot and the four year old would get the nasal mist. I take the boy home, load the girls up and head back. When we saw the doc again, he decided to put the girls on Tamiflu as a precaution (1xday for 10 days with them, 2xday for 5 days for the boy). Then we were sent on our way. It wasn't until I got home that I realized um, what about the shot? The spray?
Now I don't know if I should even bother with the shot? I know we aren't doing the spray for the girl because it's a live dose of the virus and no thank you, we don't need that. I don't care what anyone says.
So, here we are. November 2009. NaBloPoMo? Welcome back!
*I always, and I mean always, type Tamifly. Always.
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